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Monday, November 12, 2018

In the new place with new challenges.

Our view of Toronto

In the livingroom

We are in our new place and have been for some time now also it is beginning to feel like home! I have a room dedicated to my rollmop desk with my radio equipment in it which was better than the last setup where the desk was basically in the living room. By way of an update we are still in a condo but have moved 10 floors up (now on 16) in the same condo but a 2 bedroom 2 bath which is great. The "odd" issue I have been having is my MFJ 1788 mag loop has a very poor SWR when on the balcony of the new place. The best SWR I can get is 1.6:1 and thats it, I have tried moving it all over the balcony but the SWR just gets worse. The balcony at the old place is basically the same size as the new one. The difference is the old balcony was a 1/2 circle and the new one is rectangle. I brought the antenna into the living room and took it apart just to check and make sure the move did not damage it. All was well with the antenna and the next odd thing is from the living room on two chairs the SWR is perfect! Very less than ideal conditions and all is good with the MFJ loop. I also have the Chameleon CHA P loop and I put that on the balcony and it tunes to a flat SWR. This issue with this antenna is it has to be manually tuned as were the MFJ mag loop can be done from the warmth of my room.
I was able to run coax along the wall in such a way that it's not noticeable and out to our balcony. I took advantage of a persian carpet runner in the hallway to hide the coax. I then used Comet CTC 50M to get the coax outside. At the old place I was able to leave the MFJ antenna on the balcony but were we are not at times the wind that comes off lake Ontario is crazy so it's indoors.....not that it matters as the SWR is very poor. In the next post an update on my Sun SDRpro 2 rig.

2 comments:

Hello Mike, such a situation keeps you experimenting. Maybe you can place a winding next to the loop as an auxiliary feed loop to figure out whether the existing loop must be smaller or larger. 73, Bert

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About Me

I've been a ham radio operator since 1989 my interests in ham radio vary from contesting, low power operation (know as QRP) and building Elecraft radios. In the last 4 years my interest in kit building has taken off. I have built the Elecraft KX1,K2 and the KX3. Some other kits include the LP-Pan,LP-100,4SQRPometer..and the list goes on. I hope you enjoy your stop at my blog and find it informative. Feel free to leave a comment!
73(72)
Mike